Alan
Alda, Spokesman for Science
FEB. 24, 2014
PLA
A Conversation With Alan
Alda
The
actor turned educator talks about how science can be made clearer and more
accessible to the public if served with a helping of improvisation.
CHICAGO — The most popular speaker at
the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
was not a scientist but one of science’s most high-profile advocates: the actor
and writer Alan Alda.
Best known for his role as Hawkeye
Pierce in the long-running television series “M*A*S*H,” Mr. Alda, 78, has a new
mission: helping train scientists to communicate to a wider audience.
We spoke twice, for a total of two
hours. What follows is an edited and condensed version of our conversations.
Q. In high school, were you a science
type or an art type?
A. A
little of both. I was living through C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures,”
art and science. This was the 1950s, right around the time he was thinking
those famous thoughts. I knew I had to be a writer and actor — I’d been
preparing for that since I was 8. But I was curious about science and nature,
too.
Unfortunately, the way things were
organized, I was forced to decide between them. In a way, the choice was made
for me because the science teaching was so uncreative and discouraging. In
biology, there was a teacher who talked about how when you cried, the tears got
rid of toxins, so it was good for you to cry. I said, “What about the other way
— is it good to laugh?” And the teacher said, “Please, be serious.”
Years later, it turns out that some
scientists think it’s healthy to laugh. But a question like that, whether it
turns out to be true or not, is a good thing to hear from a kid. You want to
hear curiosity.
How did you become so passionate about
science?
Through reading. When I was in my early
20s, I started reading every article of every issue of Scientific American. At
the time, I’d been reading a lot about the paranormal and telepathy, and I
thought Scientific American would help me know if any of that was true. There,
I discovered a whole other way to think, based on evidence. And so I left my
interest in spiritualism behind, in favor of critical thinking.
After that, I began to read books about
science avidly. Even today, it’s what I mostly read.
You must have been thrilled when the
magazine asked you to host its television series “Scientific American
Frontiers.”
Oh, I think they asked a lot of people.
I used to joke that a letter came addressed to “Occupant.”
I said I’d only be interested if they’d
let me do the interviews. I saw it as a chance to learn about their work from
scientists themselves. They took a chance on me because they didn’t know how it
would turn out with someone who wasn’t a trained science journalist.
It was lucky they agreed, because in
the process of doing the interviews, we came up with a different way of doing a
science show. There were no set questions. I just came in, curious to
understand the scientist’s work. And if I didn’t understand it, I’d badger them
until I did.
Over the years, I must have done around
700 of these interviews, and I felt that in doing them I had stumbled onto
something that could help solve a big problem the science community faces.
Which is?
That scientists often don’t speak to
the rest of us the way they would if we were standing there full of curiosity.
They sometimes spray information at us without making that contact that I think
is crucial. If a scientist doesn’t have someone next to them, drawing them out,
they can easily go into lecture mode. There can be a lot of insider’s jargon.
If they can’t make clear what their
work involves, the public will resist advances. They won’t fund science. How
are scientists going to get money from policy makers, if our leaders and
legislators can’t understand what they do?
I heard from one member of Congress
that at a meeting with scientists, the members were passing notes to one
another: “Do you know what this guy is saying?” “No, do you?”
Don’t you find this sad because
scientists have a great story to tell?
Every experiment is a great story.
Every scientist’s life is a heroic story. There’s an attempt to achieve
something of value, there’s the thrill of knowing the unknown against
obstacles, and the ultimate outcome is a great payoff — if it can be achieved. Now,
this is drama!
The Alan Alda Center for Communicating
Science, how did that get started?
A few years, I began going around the
country talking at universities and putting out this crazy idea: Could we teach
courses to turn scientists into capable communicators? I believed I had
techniques from acting, directing and writing that could help.
I didn’t get interest anywhere except
at Stony Brook. We set up the Center
for Communicating Science there, which a couple of years later
they named after me.
You use acting improvisations to teach scientists
to become better communicators. How does that work?
Well, we don’t do comedy improvisation
or making things up. The object is to put people through games and exercises
that force them to make contact with the other player. You have to observe the
other person, anticipate what they are going to do. You almost have to read
their minds.
We teach other skills too: how to
distill their messages, how to do on-camera interviews, how to speak on panels.
These are all things scientists have not been trained for and it’s useful for
them to know.
Your center has initiated a project
called “The Flame Challenge.” What is it?
It’s something from my childhood. When
I was about 11, I got obsessed with what was happening in a flame. I tried to
figure out why they were so different from anything else I had ever seen. It
gave off heat and light and you could put your finger through it — it didn’t have
substance, apparently. There was nothing like it. So I asked a teacher. “It’s
oxidation!” she said, flatly. No elaboration. It shut me down.
So we started a contest for
scientists: Tell us what a flame is in a way that an 11-year-old can
understand. The point was to challenge scientists to explain something
difficult in words that were both easy to understand and accurate. The first
year we had 6,000 entries — kids and scientists. Now we have 20,000. This year,
the question is “What is color?” I invite your readers to participate. The
deadline is March 1.
Does it thrill you that you’re bringing
C. P. Snow’s two cultures closer together?
You bet it does. Science and art are
two long-lost lovers, yearning to be reunited. And now I get to be a
matchmaker.
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